Eastern Germany, aeging more quickly, faces worse labour shortages

Eastern Germany faces more serious and immediate workforce shortages, as an older population moves into retirement and fewer young people are around to replace them, the head of Germany's Federal Employment Agency said on Friday.

A major exodus of young people from the former communist East Germany who headed west in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall has continued to shape a demographic divide in the reunified country 35 years later, said Andrea Nahles, the agency's chairwoman.

The former East Germany is older and has a more acute shortage of working-aged residents than the former West Germany, she said.

That's also made the former East more dependent on immigrants to fill jobs as a growing share of the population passes retirement age.

However stark anti-immigrant sentiment in many parts of the former East risks compounding those problems by slamming the door on needed foreign workers or making them feel unwelcome.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which campaigns on a hard-line anti-immigrant message, has been polling around 30% ahead of September state parliamentary elections in the eastern states of Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg.

"We must keep these states attractive for people immigrating from other countries," Nahles said. "A culture of openness, diversity and [being] welcome is very important."

While the total number of people in employment continues to grow in the former West Germany, it's already begun falling in the East, she said.

All growth in employment in the East since 2017 has been entirely attributable to immigrants with foreign passports, Nahles said. That's only been true of Germany as a whole since 2023.